During
the first half of 2008, things are looking a bit quiet on the racing front as
far as new releases are concerned. The second half doesn't look to be too
active either, save for the one or two of the usual suspects that release a new
game in a series each year. But if you focus your attention to the year's
midpoint, you'll find Race Driver: Grid. From the team at
Codemasters that brought us DiRT in 2007 comes a very
promising looking racer. Although the game stems from a series, Race Driver has
not seen the light of day on consoles or PC since the release of TOCA
Race Driver 3 in early 2006. Now sporting a full crash engine that
will have parts of your car flying all over the place upon impact, Grid
takes you on a solo career initiative to locations in Asia, Europe, and the
United States.

Unlike
many more recent racing games, Grid's focus will not be on
car customization. There's no pimping your ride, so to speak. Instead, the game
is all about the racing experience with fully licensed vehicles that can be
added to your garage as you progress. While it's totally possible to destroy
your vehicle during a race, Grid offers a "flashback" feature that
allows you to rewind the race ten seconds before your crash and hopefully avoid
what was once certain death. Some may view this feature as a cheat, but it may
very well be appreciated during some of the longer races. We can better make
that determination when Grid ships in June.

Metal
Gear Solid 4, titled "Guns of the Patriots", was announced
in 2005, long before the PlayStation 3 hit the market. While many hoped that
the new game would be the first of a trilogy in the long running series, the
folks at Konami assured us that this was not the case. In fact, Guns
of the Patriots was named as the final game in the Metal Gear series.
While this may disappoint, the game should not -- it looks incredible.

In
Metal Gear Solid 4, hero Solid Snake returns in odd but rare
form. As the result of a faulty cloning process, Snake is now aging rapidly
with looks that could pass for the father of the Solid Snake we've seen in
previous games. The final adventure finds Snake using stealth mechanics and an OctoCamo
suit to blend in with his surroundings as he attempts to assassinate long time
rival, Liquid Ocelot. Expect to be reintroduced to the many familiar characters
that made the series great when the game ships in June.

Also
slated for a June release is Alone in the Dark. Now here's a
title we haven't seen in quite a while. While many believed that The New
Nightmare released in 2001 marked the end of the series whose title
was synonymous with the survival horror genre, the developers at Eden Studios
confirm that this is not the case. Fans that enjoyed Alone in the Dark
since its debut on PC in 1992 will be pleased to see the return of protagonist
Edward Carnby as he investigates supernatural occurrences that are shaking up
New York City's Central Park.

While
adventure elements such as puzzle-solving will most certainly make their way into
the latest installment, an entirely new way of experiencing the series has been
implemented. This time around, the game will be broken up into 30-40 minute
episodes. While episodic gameplay is nothing new, it is most commonly offered
in separate releases a la Half-Life 2 or Sam and
Max. However, in this case, gamers will get the entire saga in a
single package. Each episode's cliff-hanger ending will be followed by a quick
recap of the events specific to your game and the routes you chose to take on
your way through that episode. This seems like a cool feature, but only time
will tell if gamers will react favorably or see it as a hindrance to the
overall experience. And that time is slowly but surely drawing near. As for me,
I have seen this game in action and it certainly has all the elements that
should appease fans of survival horror and action junkies alike.

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58 Comments

Hey folks! As Jarred stated, there were a number of games that were equally worthy of rearing their heads in this article, but I chose to stick with the ones that were at least targeted for 2008. So titles labeled TBA 08 took precedent over the lone TBA's. This was a fun article to do and I plan to create a similar one as we get closer to the holiday season. By then, hopefully games like StarCraft II, Left 4 Dead, and Project Origin will have the release dates nailed down. I was, however, glad to include some of the lesser known games that I felt derserved some attention. That said, I wish I could have included 10 screens from Zeno Clash. The game looks like it'll be a riot! Anyway, I hope you enjoy these brief previews. More on the way! Reply

It's slated for launch in late November or early December, and I'm a little disappointed it's not on the list.

There are like 7 or 8 FPS games on the list that all look to offer IDENTICAL gameplay...yet only one RTS, despite the fact that the new Supreme Commander game and Starcraft II are due out this year, both of which have completely different gameplay to each other and to Spore. Reply

A little?!!! How the hell could it NOT be on the list? Just because it's not a shooter doesn't mean it's not totally rad. Ugh. At LEAST they got it right when they put Fallout 3 on the list. Fallout was a sweet game. I never got bored! Reply